Lawmakers call for teachers' salary freeze; some union in CNY say no way, some say maybe

Gary Walts / The Post-StandardFourth grade teacher Patricia Kalet works with 10-year-old Tun Tun at T. Aaron Levy K-8 school, on Fellows Avenue in Syracuse. The Syracuse school board voted to close Levy as a way to save money, and is seeking to cut even more by renegotiating labor contracts.
Syracuse, NY -- Three Democratic assemblymen this week asked the New York State United Teachers to consider a pay freeze to reduce layoffs and other cuts looming over school districts. For unions with contracts locked in for 2010-11, that would mean renegotiating issues long settled. At least one local district already has tried that tactic.

In Hannibal, the school board asked for a two-year pay freeze from all six of its unions to help close a $1.6 million budget gap. Five of the unions agreed, the teachers union said no and that was the end of that. A school board member said it would be unfair to ask for cuts unless every union agreed. “It is our position that we cannot support any further concessions from our members,” Jeff LaMont and Sam Patane, Hannibal Faculty Association presidents, told the board in a letter.

At least three other local school districts have asked unions to consider contract concessions — Syracuse, Jordan-Elbridge and Oswego. In Oswego, the school district asked the union for concessions for 2010-11, the final year of its contract, and the union leadership came back with an offer, union President Brian Haessig said. Neither he nor Superintendent William Crist would reveal the offer.

Syracuse SuperintendentDaniel Lowengard said he asked his districts’ unions to open their contracts. Syracuse’s tentative budget includes cutting 221 jobs and closing a school. It also includes $2 million in projected savings from renegotiated labor contracts. Lowengard said the district needs to know what its revenues from the city and state will be before it can renegotiate a contract.

Syracuse Teachers Association President Anne Marie Voutsinas could not be reached for comment.

Going after teachers’ salaries is a short-term fix that does nothing to address the fundamental problem with school financing, which is the state formula used to allocate money to schools, Lowengard said.

That formula shortchanges poor districts, a problem the state has acknowledged and pledged to fix, forced to do so by a lawsuit won by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. But the state has yet to follow through on its promise to provide districts funding they were supposed to receive under a revamped formula, Lowengard said.

“The teachers are an easy target. It may be a short-term solution, but it won’t fix it for next year ... unless you are saying ‘This is our plan — from now on we’ll never give teachers raises,” he said.

Syracuse teachers made concessions when they negotiated the current contract, Lowengard said. They assumed a larger share of the cost of their health benefits. They also received 4 percent annual raises for four years, but that works out to 3 percent a year when the health give-back is factored in, he said.

Jordan-Elbridge schoolSuperintendent Marilyn J. Dominick said the teachers’ union in her district also agreed to pick up more of teachers’ healthcare costs in the current contract. But she’s asked all of her unions to consider wage concessions for the new budget year.

Paul Farfaglia, president of the Jordan Elbridge Teacher Association, said the union is willing to talk about pay. “All I can say is we’re talking about it. We bargained the current agreement we have in this climate, so we did make concessions last June,” he said. “We’ve got to look at what she’s proposing. We haven’t had anything concrete yet, but we’ll talk. We’ll always talk, but I don’t know what we’re going to do yet.”

The three assemblymen who signed the letter to the state teachers union — Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, of Buffalo, Ginny Fields, of Suffolk County, and Michael Benjamin, of the Bronx — estimate school districts would save more than $1 billion in 2010-2011 if teachers would agree to a freeze.

Teachers and children should not bear the dramatic cuts that will be in the final state budget, but teachers must be a part of the solution if the state is to address its long-term challenges, the letter said. “While we believe that teachers ought to receive a good salary, we also believe that they must recognize, and share in, the tough choices that all New Yorkers are faced with as a result of this fiscal crisis,” it said.

State union President Richard Iannuzzi, to whom the three lawmakers sent the letter, said contracts are up to the local unions, not the state union. Local unions have made sacrifices in their contracts, including wage and health concessions, he said. When unions and districts collaborate, they find ways to still deliver as much of their programs as they can under the current economic conditions, Iannuzzi said.

Like Lowengard, he argues the real issue is that the state “continues to cut back on its obligation to appropriately fund public education.”

“My response to Assemblyman Hoyt is, what is he putting on the table, what is his recommendation for revenue on the side of those who have gone through this economic crisis somewhat better than others,” Iannuzzi said. “And certainly we have hedge fund operators and bankers and others who have benefited through the process and instead of the assemblyman asking working men and women to be sacrificing more than they already are, it’s time for him to stand up to the financiers who are behind him and ask them to start sacrificing.”